Hi

What about Bob?

So I like music like most human beings in history. Though I do have a friend who doesn’t like music which is just some weird outlier shit. He’s kinda crazy so it follows that he has nutty preferences I guess. I mean I’m not hating. I like people who live and love life in bizarre frowned upon ways (with limits of course).

Let me focus. So I listen to music or podcasts all day and sometimes I wanna hear hip hop or shit with a beat and sometimes I wanna hear Americana and pretend I’m a bearded hipster sitting on an imaginary porch somewhere in Brooklyn.

It’s crazy and obvious and easy I guess that I just bob to the beat and adjust naturally to the tempo without even thinking about it. I’m not saying the shit’s differential calculus but it’s just cool the human body and mind automates that stuff.

I think I’m the only one in my office that actually physically bobs his head in the office. They might think I’m weird. No, they definitely think I’m weird.

So when I listen to Wagon Wheel, I’m happy but I’m not physically moving at all. But when Hypnotize comes on, I move and it’s borderline involuntary. I realize I’m doing it but I don’t have any desire to stop it. It feels good. It’s fun. And I think Biggie (RIP) would appreciate it.

So I saw this post on a message board from 6 years ago and I have no idea if it’s legitimate science or not. It just sounds really cool to me and it definitely amuses me that I can ramble on and use these “facts” as my starting point. And if it gives me fuel, I’m down.

… no attribution for this excerpt. I’m too lazy…

“I am not an expert. I can only provide what I have read, but I will provide sources. It appears what you describe is definitely more than learned behavior. From Oliver Sacks’ “Musicophilia”—…”

(I’m gonna jump in when I have something to say – don’t say I didn’t warn you)

“…’In every culture there is some form of music with a regular beat…

(I LOVE my Scandinavian brothers and sisters but they seem like a decidedly un-regular beat kind of people)

(Again I guess hip hop is world wide and has been for a while now but I just can’t see Stockholm hanging – but who am I to talk? I’m hella UNCOOL.)

“… and elicits synchronized motor response in listeners…”

(Yeah yeah that happens to me)

“…This linking of auditory and motor systems seems universal in humans, and shows itself spontaneously, early in life…”

(Yeah I don’t really like kids at all except for mine but I do think it’s cool that kids dance without any self-consciousness. They haven’t had fucked up society fuck their minds and spirits up yet)

“[…] Research has shown that so-called responses to rhythm actually precede the external beat. We anticipate the beat, we get rhythmic patterns as soon as we hear them, and we establish internal models or templates of them. […]”

(Are you kidding me? Is this dude saying people are auditory psychics? Like when Regulate comes on, I start bobbing my head to the right beat almost instantly but that’s because I’ve heard the song so many times I know the beat by heart. But this guy is saying, if I’m understanding correctly, that if I were to put on a song with a head bobbing beat that I had never heard before, some kind of magic Mental hunan power would accurately predict the beat and transfer those instructions instantly to my neck and head. I guess they must have done experiments to figure this out. I wonder if they used 90’s hip hop? No they probably couldn’t because everyone knows those beats. Either way, the way the mind works just fascinates the hell out of me.)

“… Keeping time, physically and mentally, depends … on interactions between the auditory and the dorsal premotor cortex -…”

(I’m fairly certain these are brain parts but if this amigo has already lost me in a couple sentences maybe I should take his book off my amazon wish list.)

“…and it is only in the human brain that a functional connection between these two areas exists…”

(And here I thought humanity just plain sucked. Turns out we got some shit going for us. Though I think it would be cool if sharks could chill out and listen to It Was a Good Day or if Lions could just bob their heads to Juicy)

“…Crucially, these sensory and motor activations are precisely integrated with each other.”

Oh wait! Leave me your favorite head bobbing song in the comments! Only 2 people actually read this blog regularly so it’s not too much to ask you two. I’m doing all this writing for you motherfuckers. (All love implied – I’m just salty)